Compare Steinbeck's novel with the1992 film version of 'Of Mice and Men'. In your discussion you should focus on the two openings, the presentation of Curley's wife and the treatment by both the book and the film of a powerful scene.

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Compare Steinbeck’s novel with the1992 film version of ‘Of Mice and Men’.  In your discussion you should focus on the two openings, the presentation of Curley’s wife and the treatment by both the book and the film of a powerful scene

In this essay I am going to discuss two versions of ‘Of Mice and Men’: the original novel by John Steinbeck to the film version directed by Gary Sinise in 1992.  In my discussion I will focus on both of the openings in both media, the presentation of Curley’s wife and a powerful scene.  I will write about how the two texts contra verse or are alike in their treatment of the story.

     John Steinbeck’s novel begins with a description of the setting, which introduces the atmosphere that is used in the opening scene to set a picture in your head of how the story begins.  Steinbeck uses many descriptive words to help portray a sense of feeling of tranquillity and peacefulness to the reader.  He is describing the features of the Salinas River.  The place, in which the Salinas river is supposed to be set, is ‘a few miles south of Soledad’, which describes the location of this particular river.  To describe the obvious characteristics of the actual river, he applies quotes specifying its appearance and its formation e.g. where it is.  The appearance is portrayed as being ‘deep and green’, which gives a feeling that the river is dirty; full of algae and it runs deep underground.  The description of the river is so thorough; Steinbeck even goes into expressing the temperature of the water, after it had ‘slipped twinkling over the yellow sands’ whilst being heated up by the sunlight on its way to ‘the narrow pool’.  He is gradually building up a full picture of the scene, piece by piece.  He started off by the description of the river and now he is spreading out to the banks of the river gradually getting further.  The banks of the river don’t really add to the picture, but in the opening paragraph you need to have as much description as possible so that the reader understands what you are talking about.  Steinbeck identifies that ‘on one side of the river’ it is beautiful, with ‘golden foot-hill slopes’ that curves up into the ‘Gabilan Mountains’.  He uses a variety of words to show the reader that the riverside is a very designate landscape and that the path leading up to the Gabilan Mountains is said to be ‘golden’ which gives the image that it leads to somewhere special, or leads from somewhere special.  The Gabilan Mountains have been described using very powerful terms.  The words ‘strong’ and ‘rocky’ show that the mountains are formed in a fairly solid structure.  On the opposite side of the river, the riverbank is scattered with all sorts of trees.  He describes each tree/bush completely.  First of all there are the Willows, which are said to be ‘fresh and green’.  This shows us that that area is a good place for willows to grow, hence the words ‘fresh and green’.  Again he entirely describes the whole Willow; he does this by talking about the Willow’s ‘lower leaf-junctures’, which is trying to portray a sense that this place is so lovely.  There are sycamores, which hang over the river, and he describes them as ‘mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over the pool’.  After describing the setting around the pool he starts to talk about animals in their environments and that if a lizard was to ‘run among the leaves’ he would make a ‘great skittering’.  Also the rabbits that come out at night, the sand flattened by raccoons, ‘the spread pads of dogs’ from the people at the ranches and the ‘split-wedge tracks of deer that come to drink in the dark’.  He describes the animals because it tells the reader all about what inhabitants the area that is so beautiful.  In the next paragraph he talks about a path that has been beaten hard by boys which mazes its way through the Willows and the sycamores. Just in front of the ‘low horizontal limb of a giant Sycamore’ there is a pile of ashes, which have been made by many fires.  The Sycamore’s horizontal limb has been worn away from people sitting on it so much.  This has been told to the reader because it shows that this place has been encountered by man and is not hidden.  

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     Steinbeck sets the scene by giving vibrant colours to objects like the path in the first paragraph.  He describes the path as being ‘golden’, and golden is a very shiny colour and it sticks out.  The sand has also got a vibrant colour; this colour is yellow.  Yellow is a very vibrant and bright colour.  Steinbeck also sets the scene by the description of the place that the scene is going to take place.

     The novel is different to the film version because the novel starts off by describing the scene in which George ...

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